


make it back home by monday morning

by underwaternow



Category: Men's Basketball RPF
Genre: Getting Back Together, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 13:14:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20210347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underwaternow/pseuds/underwaternow
Summary: “It’s June 4,” Kevin says easily. Of course he knows the date.The doctor’s forehead creases. “And the year?”“2016.”“Kevin,” the doctor says gently. It makes Kevin’s stomach fucking feel like ice. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s November 4, 2017.”“What the fuck,” Kevin says. He almost laughs.





	make it back home by monday morning

**Author's Note:**

> a million thank yous to grace and emily, who enabled me at every turn and were major cheerleaders for this fic from the very beginning. thank you both for welcoming/dragging me into nba fandom and for not only allowing but encouraging me to be horny and weird in your inboxes. xoxoxo
> 
> nothing in this fic is medically accurate. sorry if you clicked on this hoping for an accurate portrayal of amnesia, but you won't find it here. the timeline and basketball facts are mostly accurate, but i did tweak and handwave a few little things just to make them work better for this story. i got all my info from basketball-reference.com and the wikipedia article about the 2018 all-star game, which i'm sure were never intended to be used as source material for erotic fan fiction, but here we are.
> 
> title is from fourfiveseconds by rihanna.

There’s a beeping, somewhere. Sounds kind of like his alarm. Kevin reaches out and fumbles for his phone, but he’s just grasping at nothing but the air and now that he thinks about it, the beeping is maybe too slow, too measured to be his alarm, and why is he sleeping half upright? He blinks his eyes open. 

He’s in a hospital bed, in a sterile hospital room. The beeping is coming from a monitor to his left. The room is empty; nobody’s there with him.

Kevin’s starting to think about looking for his phone when the door swings open and Steph Curry walks in, which. That’s a little weird, hurts a little bit. He knows the guy, obviously, just lost the conference finals to him, but they aren’t friends. 

“Hey, good, you’re awake,” Steph says, and if Kevin didn’t know better he’d think Steph looked relieved. “How you feel, man?”

“Fine,” Kevin says, which isn’t quite true; his head hurts, but what’s a little headache? He’s a professional athlete. For all intents and purposes, he feels fine. “Man, what happened? Why am I here?”

“You… don’t remember?” Steph asks, faltering a little. “We collided during a drill, you fell, hit your head pretty hard on the floor. Are you sure you feel okay?”

“Why were we running drills?” Kevin says, feeling itchy and impatient all of a sudden.

Steph frowns at him. “We were at practice. Why else would we be running drills?”

When Kevin doesn’t respond, Steph says, “I’m — I’mma get the nurse. Hold on. Maybe don’t,” he starts to add as Kevin finally spots his phone on the table next to his bed and grabs it, but then he gives up and ducks back out into the hall, looking desperate.

Kevin unlocks his phone. The alerts at the top of the screen are 20 new iMessages in a group chat that seems to be with, bizarrely, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. 19 of the messages are from Draymond; the first two are asking Kevin how he feels. The other 17 are a story about some guy Dray saw in a sandwich shop and involve a lot of HAHAHAHAHAHs; Kevin can’t quite follow why it’s so funny. The last message is from Klay, and just says _ok dray_.

There’s two messages from his mom, too, but it’s just something about his sister. He can’t have been in this hospital long, then, if she isn’t blowing up his phone wanting to know how he is. The knot in his stomach loosens a little.

But… Kevin still doesn’t understand why he’s here with Steph Curry, why the only people who seem to know that he got hurt are Golden State Warriors and not his own teammates, and why Steph was talking about practice. Like Kevin was practicing with them, or something. Kevin obviously is not practicing with them.

He opens his iMessages back up and shoots off a text to Russ, just _bro i’m in the hospital where the fuck u at lol_ and that’s when Steph comes back, followed closely by a nurse.

“I just need to check your vitals,” she tells him, and he lets her check his pulse and eyes.

“How long have I been here?” Kevin asks the room at large. Steph and the nurse look at each other. “When did I hit my head?”

“This morning,” Steph says. “Everything seemed fine, no concussion, they were just gonna keep you here overnight, to make sure — you didn’t call your mom yet, I asked if you wanted to but you told me you wanted to sleep and if you called her you wouldn’t get any sleep, so…”

“Okay,” Kevin says. “So no problem, then, right? I feel good.”

“The doctor is just going to come check on you again,” the nurse tells him, and then disappears before he can ask for water or another pillow. The one he has is flat; his neck is killing him. Steph still looks worried, is shifting his weight from foot to foot. 

“What’s going on?” Kevin asks him, bluntly. 

“Nothing,” Steph says. “Probably. I mean — do you remember today’s practice?”

“I,” Kevin starts, and then stops, because he doesn’t. Doesn’t have any idea what Steph is talking about. He knows that isn’t a good sign. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Steph asks.

Kevin thinks about it, and thinks about it some more. He can’t really remember anything specific that happened recently, actually. Basketball, but that’s kind of a blur, the emotion of losing wrapped up in the pure joy of playing. There is a specific memory, though, just at the edges of his consciousness, and he struggles for it. “I remember… getting lunch yesterday? Me and Russ got — ”

“You and who?” Steph interrupts. There’s a fucking weird look on his face. 

“Russ,” Kevin says, feeling impatient again, because seriously? Who the fuck else would he be getting lunch with? “You know, kinda loud, wears a lot of ugly shirts that look great on him, about your height? You’ve met him once or twice.”

“Right,” Steph says. “Shit.”

“What the fuck’s the problem?” Kevin asks him, no real heat behind it, just a prickling annoyance, but before Steph can answer, the door opens again and a doctor comes in. “Great, hi, please tell me I’m in perfect health and can get outta here.”

“Sure,” the doctor says, and Kevin glares at Steph as Steph makes an aborted gesture. He’s chewing on his lip, looking more worried than ever. “Can you tell me today’s date, please, Mr. Durant?”

“It’s June 4,” Kevin says easily. Of course he knows the date.

The doctor’s forehead creases. “And the year?”

“2016.”

“Kevin,” the doctor says gently. It makes Kevin’s stomach fucking feel like ice. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s November 4, 2017.”

“What the fuck,” Kevin says. He almost laughs. His phone buzzes on the bed next to him, and he picks it up. It’s a text back from Russ, finally, and just seeing his name on the screen makes Kevin feel better. This is fine. It’s all some weird prank — probably it was Russ’s idea, and this is going to be him saying _ha, gotcha_ and Kevin can leave the hospital and go laugh with him about it. It’s fine. 

He opens the message.

It says, _thought i told you to stop fucking talking to me_.

-

So Kevin has amnesia, apparently. That’s a thing.

-

Kevin ends up back home — “home,” a house he has no memory of, blandly decorated by someone he paid a lot of money to do so — after a day and a half in the hospital. He called his mom after the doctor dropped the amnesia bomb and she showed up in a matter of hours, berating Steph for not insisting Kevin call her sooner and thanking him for staying at the hospital in the same breath. He didn’t text Russ back. Steph wouldn’t tell him what happened but a quick Google search and subsequent spiral into an endless web of old articles and Tweets took care of it. 

Kevin’s stomach has hurt for hours. He probably has an ulcer.

“You feel okay, honey?” his mom calls from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he lies from where he’s stretched out on the couch. “Feel fine.”

“Mmmhm,” she says. “Why do you have no food in this kitchen, Kevin?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy,” he tells her, turning the TV on. He flips from the Golf channel to Food Network, then accidentally to ESPN, where he sees his own face at the bottom of the screen. _GSW’s Durant out, day to day with undisclosed medical issues_. What the fuck, honestly. He feels like he’s stepped into a simulation. “I have no idea.”

She sighs. “Well. I’m going to the Whole Foods, then. You’ll be okay while I’m gone?”

“Ma, you don’t need to go to the store for me,” Kevin says. He flips the TV off again. “I’ll be okay.”

“You’re not just ordering takeout for days on end,” his mother tells him. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Okay,” he says, giving up on talking her out of it as she leaves through the garage. He can hear the garage door opening, the car starting, the door closing again. Then it’s oppressively quiet. Kevin looks at the ceiling, gets up and wanders around, looks out the sliding glass door at the pool.

The doorbell rings. He sighs, but goes to answer it.

Russ and Paul George are on his porch.

Kevin is 27 years old — _no,_ his brain reminds him, _it’s 2017, you’re 29, man_ — either way, he’s a grown man but he suddenly deeply wants his mom.

“Steph told me you have amnesia,” Russ says, breaking Kevin’s stunned silence. “Do you seriously fucking have amnesia?”

“Yeah,” Kevin says. Russ sighs very, very deeply and looks up at the sky, all like, _why me?_ Tortured and shit. It makes Kevin feel slightly better, seeing Russ’ usual dramatics. He glances at PG. “What’s he doing here?” 

“Jesus, Kevin,” Russ snaps, and just shoves past Kevin into the house. 

“I drove,” PG says, and follows Russ inside, leaving Kevin alone on his own goddamn porch.

“You drove… from OKC?” Kevin asks, shutting the door.

“We play in Sacramento tomorrow,” PG tells him. “We drove from Sacramento.”

“Oh,” Kevin says, and then there’s nothing to say. Russ is just standing in his huge-ass foyer, staring at him. Kevin notices absently that PG took his shoes off, like they’re planning to stay. Kevin kind of hopes not.

“What the _fuck_,” Russ finally says. “Of all the fucking people to get amnesia, you just — ” He breaks off and takes another very deep breath, his nostrils flaring, and presses his lips together. “What do you remember?”

“Not much,” Kevin admits. “I thought it was 2016 when I woke up. I remembered — ” He coughs. “The first thing I remembered was getting lunch with you? I don’t…”

PG grimaces. Kevin glares at him.

“I, like. Read about what happened,” Kevin offers. “I Googled and stuff. Um.”

“Oh yeah?” Russ says challengingly. “Did Google tell you that you just fucking _left_? You went home like it was just another summer and never came back? Did fucking Google tell you that I didn’t even know you were thinking seriously about leaving? Had to find out you’d signed here after you’d already fucking done it, Kevin? In a _text_! Did you fucking read about that, asshole?” 

He’s yelling by the end, angry. PG is backing down the hallway toward the kitchen. Kevin just stands there and takes it. 

“These aren’t rhetorical questions, man!” Russ yells.

“I… I had a general idea,” Kevin says, quiet. He’d seen enough on Twitter to know it had been ugly, but it’s different with Russ standing in front of him, eyes flashing, the anger and pain visible on his face. Real. He clenches his hands into fists, hates himself.

“Oh, a general idea,” Russ says mockingly. “Jesus. I’d fucking love to just have a _general idea_ of what happened.”

“I’m sorry,” Kevin says desperately, and he is, but Russ’ face when the words land tell him immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. 

“You’re _sorry_,” Russ repeats. His voice is calm now, low and deadly quiet, and he takes a step forward, toward Kevin. “You wanna know something? You might not remember the last year and a half, but I do. So it’s gonna take a little more than _I’m sorry_, Kevin.”

Russ spits his name out like it’s poison. Kevin almost staggers backward.

“We’re leaving,” Russ announces. “I don’t — fuck, why did I come here? This doesn’t change anything.” He pushes past Kevin for the second time, yanks the door open and storms through it without looking back.

Kevin takes a deep breath. PG is putting his shoes back on; he straightens up and gives Kevin a pitying look. Kevin hates it. 

“Good luck with recovery, man,” PG says, and then he’s out the door after Russ. Kevin slams it behind him. It doesn’t make him feel better. His stomach still hurts. 

-

Kevin spends four games on the bench before the doctors decide his brain won’t implode if he plays basketball, and so he’s playing basketball again, which is nice. It makes him feel more like himself. He didn’t remember any plays, nothing about the Warriors’ system coming back to him intellectually, but it comes back to him out on the court, muscle memory and years of training taking over. 

They head out on a four-game trip almost as soon as Kevin is cleared to play; it’s a slog out to the East Coast that ends with a game in Oklahoma. Kevin is dreading it.

He plays like he’s treading water the whole trip; Coach Kerr sits him against the Nets. He’s back in the starting five in OKC and it’s not any better; they lose and something snaps in him, and it ends in a shouting match with Russ on the court, their teammates hovering around them nervously as Kevin pushes his way into Russ’ personal space, refusing to be careful about it, relishing the feeling. 

Steph finds him on the flight home, settling into a seat next to Kevin at the back of the plane. There’s a small frown on his face, his forehead wrinkled up with worry. Kevin is pretty sure Steph feels responsible, both as the leader of the team and the one who collided with him when he fell and hit his head, but he just can’t find it in him to spend any time reassuring Steph that he’s okay. 

“Are you… how are you doing?” Steph asks, his voice hushed like he’s at church.

Kevin shrugs. He doesn’t bother fully removing his headphones. 

“Because it would make sense if you weren’t doing that great,” Steph continues earnestly. “I… do you want to talk about anything?”

Kevin shakes his head, starts bouncing his leg. He pointedly turns up the volume of his music, phone resting on his knee; Steph glances down, can’t miss it. 

“If you do want to talk,” Steph says, starting to push himself up out of the seat. 

“I know where to find you,” Kevin says flatly. He can’t quite articulate why, but he knows that even if he did want to talk about it, there’s no way he’s going to Steph Curry with any of his problems.

“Yup,” Steph says. He hesitates in the aisle of the plane, like if he just waits long enough Kevin will change his mind and pour his heart out. Kevin slides his headphones more firmly back over his ears, closes his eyes. 

-

It’s not really a surprise that in mid-December, on a weekend when they have a couple of days off between Dallas coming to town and jumping down to LA for a game against the Lakers, Kevin gets a text from Klay Thompson. Steph hasn’t gotten any less persistent about getting Kevin to open up to him, and Kevin hasn’t gotten any more willing to open up, so clearly this is Plan B.

The text just says _park w rocco u in?_

What is a surprise is that Kevin finds himself sending back _sure where_ and 40 minutes later he’s pulling into the parking lot of some dog park in Alameda. Klay’s already there, throwing a tennis ball for Rocco. The park is deserted otherwise, even though it’s a nice day; the sun is peeking through the marine cloud layer, air only slightly chilly. Kevin has a feeling this park is usually deserted and that’s why they’re there.

“Hey,” he calls, letting himself inside the fenced area. Klay just raises a hand in greeting. When Kevin reaches him he holds out the slobbery tennis ball, Rocco winding around his legs.

Kevin takes it, tries not to make a face and throws it as hard as he can. Rocco gallops after it.

“So Steph told me to talk to you,” Klay says, no pretense.

“Steph needs to relax,” Kevin says. “I don’t need to talk, it’s fine, I just — ”

“That’s what I told him,” Klay interrupts. He crouches down as Rocco returns, accepting the disgusting tennis ball and scratching behind Rocco’s ears before standing up and throwing it again. “I mean, you do need to talk. But I’m not gonna make you.”

“Oh,” Kevin says. “I — okay. No offense, then, man, but why am I here?”

Klay shrugs. “Thought you might wanna get out of the house.”

Kevin considers this as Rocco comes back and drops the tennis ball in front of Kevin. 

“He wants you to throw it,” Klay says unnecessarily; Rocco is staring up at Kevin, panting, his entire back half moving as he wags his tail. Kevin picks the ball up gingerly and throws it again.

“You really hurt him, man,” Klay says suddenly. 

“Who? Steph? He’s a grown up, he’s fine,” Kevin says. He knows Klay doesn’t mean Steph.

“Russ,” Klay says anyway. “Like.” He pauses to think about it as he sends the tennis ball flying across the park for Rocco again. “I don’t know him much, and I still know how bad he was hurting when you came here.”

“Great,” Kevin says, as blandly as possible, desperate to mask the emotion welling up in his throat, threatening to choke him. “Does the whole league know?”

He’s being sarcastic, doesn’t expect an answer, but Klay considers it and nods. “Yep. Prolly.” He pops both Ps. Kevin is irrationally annoyed. 

They’re both quiet for a few minutes; Rocco gets bored of the tennis ball, finds a stick and settles down in the dirt to gnaw on it, and Klay jams the ball into the pocket of his sweatshirt, apparently unbothered by dog drool. They sit on a bench.

“I get that you don’t remember,” Klay says eventually. “But you gotta know that was fucked up.”

“I know,” Kevin says. “It’s just. I don’t remember doing it so I don’t remember why I did it.”

“Doesn’t seem like it matters much why you did it,” Klay says. From anyone else, that would piss Kevin off; from Klay, it doesn’t sound judgmental, or rude, or like much of anything besides his usual blend of monotone and matter of fact. “You gotta talk to people, like… that’s the number one rule of relationships, right?”

“Oh my god,” Kevin says before he can stop himself. “Are you seriously lecturing me about not communicating?” 

Klay half-grins. “You telling me I’m wrong?”

Kevin doesn’t say anything. 

“Think about it,” Klay says after a few minutes. “You left him.”

“I didn’t leave _him_!” Kevin says, heated. “I made a _business decision_, and he — ”

“You left,” Klay repeats, “and you didn’t let him know you were going to, and you didn’t even tell him to his face. Someone does that to me, that doesn’t feel like a business decision.”

Kevin has never heard Klay say this many words at once before. He kind of resents that Klay has chosen now to get chatty. He blames Steph Curry.

“Fuck business,” Klay says. “You and Russ, that’s more important, and you threw it away.”

Kevin looks away, swallowing. He gets the feeling that Klay knows that there’s more to him and Russ than most people do. He gets the feeling that Klay is more observant, smarter than people give him credit for. 

“It was — ” he starts, his voice low. “I mean, we weren’t — ”

“Weren’t you?” Klay says.

Kevin doesn’t say anything. He wonders how much Klay knows, if he knows about the months of unsure flirting and circling each other and every single time Kevin thought about kissing Russ, almost kissed him, didn’t kiss him. He wonders if Klay knows that the night they lost the conference finals was the night he finally did. He wonders who told him. 

“I’m just saying,” Klay says. “It was never about business.” He pushes himself up off the bench and whistles to Rocco. “We gotta go, man,” he informs Kevin as Rocco trots over, the stick he’d been busy with wedged firmly in his mouth. “Thanks for hanging out. Rocco, you wanna say thanks to KD? He threw your ball for you, dude.” 

Rocco looks at Kevin dispassionately, and then turns and heads toward the gate. 

“We’re working on his manners,” Klay says seriously. “See you around, man.” 

“Sure,” Kevin says, and Klay heads after Rocco, leaving Kevin sitting on a bench in a dusty dog park with his head a complete mess. 

-

Kevin packs his bag for All-Star weekend and heads to LA with a fair amount of trepidation. He knows he was there last year; he knows it was fine. When the All-Star selections had been announced and he knew he’d be there again, Klay had texted him a link to a highlight video from 2017 that included him tossing Russ a lob, the bench up on their feet when Russ finished it off. Kevin played it on his TV over and over, sitting in the dark like he watches game film, the images flickering in front of him, trying to glean any kind of meaning, emotion from it. 

Knowing he was there is different than remembering.

“We’ll hang out with you all weekend,” Draymond says on the plane down, very insincerely. Kevin rolls his eyes. He knows they won’t; Steph probably has a packed itinerary of sponsored appearances, Klay already thinking about when and how he can sneak away and lock himself in his hotel room. Dray might actually be willing, but thinking about spending a full weekend one on one with Dray makes Kevin feel tired. 

“Who said I wanna hang out with you, huh?” Kevin says absently, not looking away from his phone. “You playing for Team Stephen.” He’s joking, but if he’s honest with himself it burns a little that they’re all playing together; he’s the sole Golden State All-Star on Team Lebron. Just him, Russ, and Paul George. Great. 

Dray cackles, loud in the quiet of the plane. It’s just the four of them on the charter; Steph’s immersed in his iPad, and Klay slouched down low in his seat, pulled his hat over his eyes, and fell asleep before they even took off. “Okay, KD, I see how it is. Bet you a grand we win.”

“You’re on,” Kevin says. 

“And — ” Draymond pauses for what Kevin is almost positive is effect. “You talk to Russ.”

Steph looks up.

“Talk to Russ about what?” Kevin says, finally locking his phone and putting it down; there’s nothing interesting on any of his social media channels. “I talked to Russ. It went bad. There’s no talking to Russ.” 

“Scared?” Dray says. 

“Fuck you,” Kevin says, zero heat behind it. “Fine, yeah, you guys win and I’ll talk to Russ.”

“Yeah, baby!” Dray says. “Oh, get ready, KD, we’re runnin’ all over you! Get ready to talk to Russ!” He points at Steph, whose attention is back on his iPad now that he knows Kevin isn’t going to break down in tears and share a bunch of his emotions at the mention of Russ’ name. “You ready, Cap? We gonna win this thing!”

“Draymond,” Klay says from under his hat. “Shut _up_.”

-

Kevin ends up going to the Skills Competition with Steph and Dray; Klay’s in the three-point contest so the three of them find spots near the front and Kevin just tries not to make eye contact with too many people. While still not officially public information, word about his amnesia has spread through most of the league at this point and every game, it feels like, Kevin has to field questions about it. He’s getting real sick of having to look some guy he doesn’t know very well in the eye and tell him no, he really doesn’t remember whatever small encounter they’d had in the last 18 months.

“We should’ve made a sign for him,” Dray says when Klay comes onto the court with the rest of the three-point participants, rolling his shoulders and looking serious. “He’d hate it so much.”

“You’re a nightmare,” Kevin tells him. Dray knocks their shoulders together. 

Kevin claps good-naturedly when Klay loses to Devin Booker by one basket; Steph is waving at him, flashing a thumbs up like a stage mom while Draymond hisses and boos. Kevin has got to get out of there. 

“You okay, man?” Steph asks when Kevin gets up. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Kevin says. “I just — little bit of a headache, I think I’m gonna call it an early night.”

“Want us to go with you?” Steph offers politely. He’s not even looking at Kevin; his eyes are darting back toward the court where Klay is with a couple of reporters.

“Nah, man, I’m fine,” Kevin says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He ducks out of their row before Steph can really say anything else, taking the steps two at a time, head down. The section of the concourse where he comes out is roped off to the public and much quieter, almost completely empty, and Kevin relaxes his shoulders and takes a deep breath.

“That bad, huh?” says a voice behind him. Kevin turns. 

Russ is leaning against the wall, his phone out. He’s wearing a crop top in February; Kevin tries not to think about it.

“Yeah,” he admits, taking a few steps toward Russ. “Just… it’s loud. People stare. What’re you doing?”

“Waiting for PG,” Russ says. He slips his phone back in his pocket.

“Right,” Kevin says. He casts around desperately for something to say that isn’t _ugh, why_. “Are you two — ”

“No,” Russ says. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“It was just a question, Russell,” Kevin says, already annoyed. “I can ask a question, can’t I? Friends ask about shit like that.”

Russ laughs. “You think we’re friends?”

It brings Kevin up short, the ugliness of it. The blunt truth. “I — ”

“I never wanted to be your _friend_,” Russ tells him. “God, you had to fucking know that.”

“I did,” Kevin admits, low, even as it occurs to him that this is the most they’ve ever talked about it; before, it was only ever dancing around it. Pretending like it was normal friend behavior that he’d look for reasons to touch Russ, would go seven blocks out of his way to pick up food from the taco truck he liked even though Kevin thought that the one between their houses was just as good. Pretending like he never noticed all those times he caught Russ watching him in the locker room, looking away and not thinking about it when Russ caught him watching back. 

Not for the first time, Kevin wishes he could remember why the fuck he left the way he did.

Russ shakes his head. “Forget it, man. God, you — ” He breaks off, looking away briefly before turning back and locking eyes with Kevin. “You’re such a coward.”

Something snaps inside Kevin’s brain. He takes three big steps forward and kisses Russ, hands on his face. Russ is warm, his lips soft like Kevin remembers, and for a second and a half it feels like maybe he’s going to kiss Kevin back.

Then Russ gets his hands between them and shoves Kevin away, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fuck you. Don’t fucking touch me. You don’t — ” He stops, takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, just for a second. He’s shaking, Kevin realizes. “You don’t get to do that,” Russ tells him. 

“I want to,” Kevin says helplessly. God, he fucked up. “I… it feels like the only thing I know for sure anymore.”

Russ’ jaw tightens. He doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, and Kevin almost leaves, sure that Russ is done with him now, the damage insurmountable and irreversible. But finally, Russ sighs. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“No,” Kevin says honestly. 

“Wish you’d figure it out,” Russ tells him, pushing himself off the wall as PG approaches. “See you around, Kevin.”

Kevin stands there and watches as Russ jogs over to PG and offers a fist bump. PG says something and Russ shakes his head, answering; they both glance at Kevin. Kevin just stares back at them, knowing they’re going to leave and go talk about him. Russ looks away first. PG stares until Kevin breaks, turns and heads in the opposite direction. It’s the long way to the players’ exit, but whatever. He could use the time to think. 

-

Kevin wakes up in a sweat on the Tuesday after All-Star, his heart pounding. He was having a dream, he knows, but something about it felt real, and he casts around in the dark for the source of the feeling. When it comes to him, he slides out of bed and goes downstairs, turns on the TV and watches again the footage of him and Russ at last year’s All-Star game. He watches it four times before he feels sure, but when he does he picks up his phone and dials.

“It’s fucking three in the morning,” Russ says flatly when he answers. “What do you want?”

“Last year,” Kevin says. His voice is croaky, and he clears his throat and wets his lips and swallows. “All-Star weekend. You… during the game, I threw you a pass for a dunk.”

“So?”

“Did you say after that it didn’t mean anything to you?”

“Yeah, on camera, after the game, to about a hundred — ”

“Nah,” Kevin interrupts, his heart beating faster. “After the play. Next time-out, or maybe we got subbed, I’m not sure. But on the sidelines, to me. You said ‘this doesn’t mean a damn thing,’ didn’t you?”

Russ doesn’t say anything. Kevin carefully puts his phone on speaker, sets it on the coffee table in front of him and buries his face in his hands. 

“Yeah,” Russ says finally. “I — who told you?”

“No one,” Kevin says. “Couldn’t have, no one heard you, you said it just to — to me. I remembered.”

“Well hey, man, congrats,” Russ says, and his voice sounds funny. “Maybe next you’ll remember why you left.”

Kevin closes his eyes. “I’m trying,” he tells him. “I… do you have any idea how much it’s killing me, that I don’t know? That I just — left you and now I can’t remember why?” His voice cracks halfway through and he presses his palms against his stinging eyes.

Russ laughs, or maybe sobs. Kevin can’t quite tell. “About as much as it’s been killing me for almost two years, Kevin. Yeah. I got an idea.” Then he hangs up. Kevin sits there in the dark, listens to his phone _beep beep beep_ at him and feels the tears drip off his chin one by one.

-

The Thunder are in town over the weekend, which is fine. It’s just another game. Flashes of his lost year have been coming to Kevin all week, little things like Dray taking him to Fisherman’s Wharf and buying crab legs from a guy selling them out of a bucket. Klay trying to teach him how to play chess on flights before giving up and going to sit with Andre instead. He thinks he remembers a pool party at his house; when he asks Steph about it, Steph shrugs and nods. “Yeah. That was your birthday party this year.” So. He remembers his birthday, at least. Nothing more about Russ hits him until Saturday, as he’s leaving the practice facility to go home and take a nap before the game and quite literally runs into Paul George. 

“Sorry,” Kevin says.

“All good, man,” PG says. “You okay?”

“Sure,” Kevin says. “I’ll see you — wait.” 

PG raises an eyebrow.

Kevin hesitates. He doesn’t want to do this, but. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yeah, man, sure,” PG says. He seems decidedly not thrilled about the prospect, but he follows Kevin into the closest spare trainer’s room and leans against the wall. “What’s up?”

“I just — you and Russ are friends,” Kevin starts, already hearing the desperation in his voice. “I’m starting to remember shit, but not the important shit, and…”

“You want to know if he told me anything,” PG summarizes. “I don’t think I can tell you about our private conversations, though, shit he told me in confidence. I don’t wanna hurt him.”

Kevin grinds his molars together, pictures taking a basketball and heaving it at PG’s face. “Look. I’m just trying to put the pieces together, you know? Why I left, why I didn’t tell him, why he reacted the way he did.”

“Why he — you haven’t even gotten that far?” PG asks. “Dude. Is it amnesia or stupidity?”

“Fuck off,” Kevin says, annoyed. This was such a fucking bad idea.

“You fuck off if you don’t even realize that he was in love with you,” PG says, and it richochetes through Kevin like gunfire. “Jesus, man.”

“He — what?” Kevin croaks.

PG looks at him for a long minute; it’s 70% disdain, 30% sympathy. Maybe 80/20. When he finally speaks, his voice is a lot quieter. “He still talks about you constantly. Don’t tell him I told you that. Figure it out, man.” He opens the door and walks through it and is gone, and Kevin grips the edge of the massage table he’s sitting on and tries to breathe as a fucking freight train of emotion and memory and realization hits him in the chest. 

Russ loved him. 

He’s shaking, he thinks; he gets up and paces around the room, feeling trapped, and eventually sinks into a chair in the corner and puts his head in his hands. Everything is blown apart, tipped sideways, and PG’s words are still fucking echoing in his head. _You don’t even realize that he was in love with you._

Kevin really fucking never realized. All this time, he thought it had been about him leaving Oklahoma, but now he knows he couldn’t have been more wrong. It was about them, him and Russ, Russ _loving_ him, and Kevin being stupid and arrogant enough to think he could fire off a text and it would all be fine. Because he remembers that, now, too: that he really thought it wasn’t that big of a deal. He remembers, clear as day, the shock he felt when Russ lashed out.

He thinks about the championship ring sitting in a case at home, the photo of him with the trophy, everything he thought he ever wanted. He remembers, he thinks, the yellow and blue confetti now. He remembers how empty he still felt the next day. 

He feels, abruptly, sick to his stomach, and he grabs the trash can just in time to throw up into it. When he’s done, he sets it down and leans forward, elbows on his knees, and tries to focus on his breathing. God. He can’t believe how badly he fucked this up. His eyes feel hot, and he squeezes them shut tight and chokes down a sob and tries to process the fact that he knows, now, that he loved Russ too. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there when Steph walks by, stops when he sees Kevin and hesitates in the doorway. “Hey, uh… you okay?” he asks. 

“No,” Kevin says, looking up at him. “I’m really not.”

Steph takes another step into the room. “You wanna talk?”

“How did I never know he loved me?” Kevin asks, a rhetorical question, and Steph freezes mid-step, clearly getting more than he bargained for. 

“I, um.”

“I loved him too,” Kevin says. “I fucking missed it, man.”

“Do you want me to get Klay?” Steph asks, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “I think he’s still here, this sounds like more his…”

“No,” Kevin says, his mind racing ahead, crackling with energy and purpose for what feels like the first time in a long time. He doesn’t know if he can fix it anymore; before, he was always so sure that he could. Now he doesn’t know, but he’s desperate to try. “But I do need your help with something.”

-

So that’s how Kevin ends up waiting in a trainer’s room, not unlike the one he had a breakdown in earlier that day, at Oracle before the game. Steph and Dray came up with a plan to get Russ to the room; Klay is supposed to distract Russ’ teammates. Kevin doesn’t have a ton of faith in the plan — what is Klay gonna do? Show them pictures of Rocco? — and Draymond definitely said something about Chloroform, which is disturbing and would also defeat the purpose, since Russ needs to be conscious, but he was joking. Kevin is pretty sure. 

He hears Russ before the door even opens, bitching at Steph about how weird this is, “spy shit, man, what the hell,” and Steph politely answering. Kevin swallows, slides off the massage table and stands in the middle of the room.

The door opens. 

Russ is framed in the doorway, Steph and Dray behind him, for just a second. He’s in his warmups already, OKC logo splashed across his chest — Kevin is just in sweats and a plain gray tee. Dray shoots Kevin a double thumbs up, grinning widely and sticking his tongue out, before Steph shuts the door.

“Really, man?” Russ says, hands on his hips. “You couldn’t just ask me if we could talk?”

Kevin shrugs. He doesn’t quite know how to articulate how important this is, how he didn’t want to take the chance that Russ would say no.

“Whatever,” Russ mutters. He’s not looking at Kevin. “Make it quick.”

“You were right,” Kevin says. “In LA, I mean. When you called me a coward.”

Russ’ face doesn’t change, but he drops his hands to his sides. It’s a small thing, but it buoys Kevin up, and he takes a breath and keeps going.

“I remembered why I left, man, and it’s… I was scared,” Kevin says plainly. His hands are shaking. “Shit was getting too real with us and I wanted it so much and that terrified me.” He remembers it all, now: the night they lost the Conference Finals, yes, Russ showing up at his room with tired eyes and leaning up to meet him when Kevin kissed him up against his hotel room door, but the rest of it too. They’d gone back to Oklahoma and it had been lazy and easy, like the whole summer, their whole lives were stretched out in front of them. Then it wasn’t. Kevin remembers waking up one morning at the end of June, a pit in his stomach and a fear so big it’d felt like he was drowning in it. He remembers the kissing, the firm lines of Russ’ body underneath him; he remembers jerking each other off while they binged shit on Netflix, and he remembers the blowjobs out by the pool, the faint taste of chlorine on Russ’ skin. Russ’ thumbs firm against the jut of Kevin’s hips, pressing him down into the couch later. 

He remembers Russ wanting Kevin to fuck him, wanting more, and he remembers the way it sat in his gut, uneasy, afraid. He remembers the surprise, the hurt on Russ’ face when he’d told him not yet. 

He remembers that they never actually fooled around in a bed. 

Russ is just watching him still, waiting. His face had been angry but it’s smoothed into something more neutral.

“I was in love with you,” Kevin gets out. “Still am.” There it is. He feels like his heart is splattered on the walls. The world is still turning.

“You just _left_,” Russ says, low. His head is bowed. “One day you were there next to me and I — I fucking felt that, man, how you loved me, and then… you take off for New York and all I get is a god damn text and the only thought in my mind is how did I get it so wrong?” He looks up at Kevin finally, and there are tears in his eyes, and Kevin can’t breathe.

“You didn’t,” Kevin says. His voice cracks. “I — fuck, I’m sorry, I fucked up. I thought — I don’t know what I thought. I wasn’t thinking. I texted you because I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing your face when I told you.”

“You should’ve,” Russ says harshly. He wipes his face, messily. “You should have come home and told me and fucking been honest. We could’ve done something with that, Kevin.”

“I know,” Kevin says. He feels like he’s standing on a battlefield, and he’s gathering up the scattered pieces of his body and his broken brain and his heart and holding them out to Russ. “I… can we do something with this?” 

Russ looks away. Kevin’s stomach sinks.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Russ says, and he moves across the room in two steps and fists his hand in Kevin’s t-shirt and drags him down to crush their mouths together. 

It’s not a yes, but it feels like one. It feels like home, like everything Kevin’s been trying to piece together for the last four months, and he holds Russ’ face in his hands and doesn’t think about anything except Russ’ mouth on his, Russ’ breath coming in shallow gasps, the slow drag of his tongue against Kevin’s, wet and a little dirty already.

The door bangs open. 

“Oh, thank fuckin’ Christ,” Draymond says.

Kevin drops his hands, but he doesn’t move away from Russ. He can still feel his heartbeat pounding through his body.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Steph says, “but Klay is almost through the Rocco album on his phone and y’all need to get ready for warmups anyway.”

“Yeah,” Russ says. He hasn’t moved either. “Give us thirty seconds.”

“Yeah, okay,” Steph says. The door shuts again, but not before Dray says in a stage whisper, “What’re they gonna be able to do in thirty seconds?”

“He’s an idiot,” Kevin says. “Sorry.”

“Everyone knows Draymond’s an idiot,” Russ says. “Kevin. I… this’ll take time.”

“I know,” Kevin says. He leans closer, presses his forehead to Russ’. 

“I’m not coming to your house,” Russ says after a minute. “We’re at the Four Seasons. 1208, I… after the game. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Kevin says immediately. It’s more than he’d dared hope for. “I — yes.”

“Good,” Russ says. He steps backward, gives Kevin one last, lingering look, and then leaves. Kevin hears him say something to Steph and Dray, and he leans against the massage table as they both look into the room. 

“You good?” Steph asks. Draymond opens his mouth to say some shit that Kevin is positive will be stupid, but Steph elbows him and he shuts up. 

Kevin nods.

Klay comes barreling in behind them, out of breath. “Hey, I ran out of pictures and PG took off, said something about needing to find Russ, I — oh. He’s not here. He’s gone?” Klay looks around, like Russ might be stuffed into one of the cupboards. “Did it work?”

Kevin nods again, bringing one hand up to touch his mouth. He can feel himself smiling, just a little. 

“They made out,” Draymond announces gleefully, like a 13 year old girl at a slumber party. 

“Yeah!” Klay says, putting his arms in the air and pushing past Steph to bump his chest against Kevin’s, like it’s mid-game and he just buried a three from deep. “Man! Yes! That’s so awesome!”

Kevin feels himself smiling for real, ducks his head. 

“We really need to go get ready for warmups,” Steph says. “Sorry, just. It’s already almost 7.”

“Relax,” Dray says, putting his arm around Steph’s neck and giving him a noogie. “We’ll get to warmups, man, this is KD’s moment.”

“Nah, he’s right,” Kevin says. He feels good, loose. “Let’s go win a game.”

-

Kevin drops 28 and they blow OKC away and he barely even notices, talks to the press during postgame without really hearing what he’s saying. All he can think about is Russ, Russ’ hands on him earlier, Russ’ eyes on him during the game, Russ guarding him, pushing for the ball, their bodies pressing against each other in a way that made Kevin feel lightheaded. 

When he leaves Oracle the Thunder’s bus is still there, but he isn’t going home. He drives to the hotel and loops around the back and sits in his car and waits until he sees it pull into the lot, the team spill out and head inside, and then he waits until the bus pulls out of the parking lot, and another five minutes after that, just in case.

After that he can’t wait anymore.

He pulls his hood up before he walks into the lobby, hopes no one will look too close and he’ll blend in as just another basketball player among the many basketball players staying at the hotel, and he slips into an elevator by himself and presses DOOR CLOSE and then watches the number on each floor light up. 

The twelfth floor is deserted when he steps out of the elevator, but Kevin thinks it would barely matter if it wasn’t. It would take a tsunami, a full-on act of God to stop him now.

He finds 1208.

He knocks, just once.

Russ opens the door almost right away, like he was waiting, standing back to let Kevin inside without a word, and then he shuts the door and turns and presses Kevin up against the wall and kisses him again. 

The last time they kissed in a hotel room, it was careful, unsure; now there’s an edge to it, Russ’ teeth catching on Kevin’s lip, his fingers digging into Kevin’s upper arms. Kevin cradles Russ’ head in one hand, lets Russ work one thigh between Kevin’s, lets his head fall back against the wall when Russ bites at his throat.

They stumble from the wall to the bed eventually. Kevin’s hands are under Russ’ shirt and Russ finally steps away and pulls it off, tossing it aside, and Kevin lets himself look without pretending he doesn’t want to. He lets Russ see him looking. 

“Take your fuckin’ shirt off,” Russ says finally, but there’s no anger in his voice; he runs his hand over the back of his head, makes a noise that could almost be laughter. Kevin pulls his shirt off, not taking his eyes off Russ. He sees Russ swallow. Kevin moves, intending to drop to his knees, but Russ stops him with a hand on his elbow.

“Don’t,” Russ says. “I wanna fuck you.”

Kevin’s brain feels like someone picked it up, shook it very hard, and then set it back down and somehow everything inside fell right back into place. Russ raises his chin, challenging him.

“Okay,” Kevin says. If this is a test, well. He isn’t leaving. He feels Russ’ eyes on him as he takes off the rest of his clothes, feels something pull in his gut when Russ looks at him and licks his lips and crowds into his space, pushing him back onto the bed. Kevin gets his hands inside the waistband of the sweats Russ had already changed into; he’s not wearing anything under them, and it stops Kevin up, knowing that Russ got back to his room and changed planning for this. To fuck him.

“Kevin,” Russ says, quiet in the space between their mouths, and Kevin squeezes his ass and pushes the sweats down. 

They move onto the bed together, limbs tangled up, hips knocking together at the wrong angle until Russ shifts, leans down to kiss Kevin again, and everything lines up and Kevin’s brain empties out, nothing left but white noise. There’s a hot fire in his belly when Russ finally stops grinding their hips together, flames licking at the base of his spine as Russ flips them over to get Kevin on top of him. 

He feels like the flames are consuming him, every inch of his skin blazing, when Russ presses a finger, slick with lube that Kevin didn’t even see him get out, inside him. When he makes a strangled noise, Russ runs his free hand down the planes of Kevin’s back, grips his hip.

“Breathe,” Russ reminds him, voice low.

So Kevin breathes through it as Russ works in deeper, opening him up. When Russ gets to three fingers, Kevin is gasping, pushing back against his hand, any discomfort he felt when they started just another forgotten memory.

“You good?” Russ asks him.

“Yes,” Kevin says. He isn’t even sure if that’s true, but he feels like he’s falling apart and letting Russ inside him is the only way to stop it. 

“How do you — ” Russ starts.

“However you want,” Kevin interrupts, not wanting to admit that he doesn’t know, content to leave Russ in control.

“Lie on your stomach, then,” Russ says, taking his fingers out. Kevin tries not to cry out at the loss, moves onto his stomach next to Russ and grips one of the pillows and closes his eyes. He hears Russ opening a condom, feels Russ moving on the bed, feels Russ touch his side. “Okay?”

“Fuck, please,” Kevin says without thinking. The fire is roaring in him. 

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Russ says, and he doesn’t wait for an answer before gripping Kevin’s hips and pushing into him. 

It’s everything, too much and not enough and overwhelming and Kevin feels surrounded. He isn’t breathing, thinks he forgot how, and then Russ pulls his hips off the bed, gets a hand on him to jerk him off, and everything is heightened. Colors are brighter, Kevin is pretty sure. He’s never felt so much in his life. 

“Come on,” Russ is saying, his hips stuttering into Kevin in quick, jerky thrusts, the only sound in the room their breathing and the sticky slap of skin on skin. “Kevin, fuck.” 

Something snaps. Kevin comes, gasping, the pillow he’s gripping suddenly wet with tears. Russ keeps going, moving more purposefully now, his body bracketing Kevin’s almost completely, one hand on Kevin’s hip and the other stroking down Kevin’s arm. “Come on,” Kevin says back to him, and Russ shudders, shoves deep into Kevin and stays there and comes. 

They don’t talk as they shift around, Russ moving off him and getting rid of the condom, Kevin rolling onto his back, but Russ lies down close to him and pulls the blankets up over both of them and Kevin will take it. He feels light.

“Flight’s not until 11 tomorrow,” Russ says. “You better fucking stay.”

“I’ll stay,” Kevin says. Russ shifts, moving closer to him, and the enormity of what happened hits Kevin all at once. He presses his face into the top of Russ’ head and takes a few deep breaths. “You — we’re gonna figure this out, right?”

Russ is quiet for a minute. Kevin wonders if he’s already asleep. Then he speaks. “Yeah. Not right now, though, so go to sleep.”

Kevin does.

-

His alarm is beeping insistently in his ear. Kevin reaches out for it, trying to silence it, but his hand just closes on air, and now that he thinks about it, that’s not his alarm ringtone. 

Next to him in bed, Russ shifts. The alarm stops. 

Kevin opens his eyes. 

Russ is sitting up, yawning, wiping at his eyes, and when he sees Kevin watching him he drops his hands down into his lap and gives Kevin a very small smile. It’s a ghost of a smile, really: faint, barely there. It’s the best thing Kevin’s ever seen.

“Morning,” he says.

“Morning,” Russ says, and leans down to kiss him. “You remember last night?”

Kevin runs his hand over Russ’ shoulder blades, feeling the muscles under his palm shift and move. “Yeah.” 

He remembers everything.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://www.rudehumpbackwhale.tumblr.com) if you wanna come hang out and yell at me about basketball. thanks for reading!


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